Season 1 Chapter 15 - Q3 People, Team members and Accountability Partners

Welcome to the Synergy Life Podcast. Our purpose is to help multiply the positive experiences of your life in all areas. Dr. Janowitz, best selling author of the Synergy Health Solution, is the creator of the Synergy Success Cycle, a framework that helps uncover what makes top achievers successful in areas of their life. We interview amazing people who are excelling in light and help our listeners gain valuable insights so they can apply them to achieve their best life possible.

Chapter 15 Team Q3 people, team members and accountability partners. Dr. Janowitz now dives deeper into the roles of those specific team members and accountability partners. Dr. Janowitz, tell us about these teams that we need to have. We need to have our healthcare team and our sick care team.

That's right.

What does that mean?

Yep. So if you think about this, say like a football game, right? You have the two teams. We've got the super bowl right now at the time of this filming coming up here.

Right.

And so most people think about a healthcare team as just their primary care doctor and maybe a specialist or two. But what you really want to do and what I encourage the listeners to think about is that having really two teams, you should have a healthcare team and you should have a sick care team. And a lot of us have good sick care teams. Maybe you have a primary care doctor or an urgent care doctor that you might go to on occasion, or you might have your specialists that are helping you when you're in that crisis. So there's that sick care or crisis care model. And unfortunately, our American healthcare system is very much reactive and crisis care model. And then as a consequence, the consumers of that model are that same way. They're going to a doctor or only when you're sick. I mean, if you said to somebody, you said, hey, you go to your primary care doctor and say, I feel great, my energy is awesome, I'm sleeping well, things are really working great in my life. I have no symptoms. That doctor is pretty much going to say, well, why are you here? Right. There's no point in like, okay, and so that is a sick care doctor is not really capable or, or has the tools and the tool just to be healthcare team. And your healthcare team is doctors or other providers too that are looking and saying, how can I take somebody from good to great? How can I improve function? How can I improve vitality? I mean, there's, my belief system is there's always another level of how you can become healthy and vibrant and strong. And, you know, it's like an onion as you unpeel A layer of your health. There's just like that next game that you can do, right? And so that's real important. And the truth is, as you get older in life, you have to work harder. And we talked about that in other episodes too, that every decade it's actually you have to work more to get the same result. So you have to always have that. So your healthcare team can consist of people like a chiropractor. And so I'd be remiss to not share the importance of chiropractic. Of course, you know, chiropractors have been really. People enter the chiropractic model in terms of typically a crisis. So they come into us maybe as a crisis care or sick care model where maybe they have some sort of ache or pain or they can't walk. I call them curbside kind of service patients. But then the true value of what chiropractic is is about making sure that the nervous system is working at its highest level at your God given potential. So our job is to remove the interference in the nervous system to allow your body to fully express itself. So a healthcare team member is looking. How can I help you fully express yourself? I view my personal trainer as part of my healthcare team. I'm not dealing with any sort of issue. I just want to keep my body at a high level because I really value function and performance. I view my wife as part of my healthcare team. You know what I mean? I mean, people say, well, are you vegetarian? Are you, are you, what kind of, how do you eat? And I say, well, I'm a wifeatarian.

A wife. I'm a flexitarian.

You're a flexitarian? I'll eat whatever my wife makes and whatever she's into. But she's fortunately, she's very health conscious so she's really good with supplementation and making sure everything is set up. And she really creates that environment. So she's part of my healthcare team. And so you have that and you can have, nutritionists can be part of it, right? You can have counselor. So you have all these areas that are your healthcare team. So if a person is helping you to not just manage a symptom or crisis, but helping you get to your best, that's your healthcare team. And then if somebody is helping you get out of a crisis, that could be your primary care doctor, that can be emergency room physician, that could even be like a GI doctor, right? A cancer doctor. There's so many different ways. Those are essential as well and those are necessary. So it's not that one is more valuable than the other because you need them both. You know, you have to have both teams. But the truth is, the more that you spend and invest time and energy on your healthcare team, the less often you'll be in crisis. It's like, right, the more that I prepare in life, the less emergencies that I have.

It's ultimately a balancing skill.

Yes.

I really like this chapter a lot because it's really one of the golden nuggets of your book. Most people think only of a healthcare team, but they have a different definition of what that is, when in reality, for the average person, it is a sick care team, like you said. So this is a crucial part of the book where a person can have that paradigm shift about taking control of their health and creating that balancing act.

Absolutely. So what you want to be thinking about is when you're looking at people and you're looking at the different areas in your life, you want to go, well, how deep is my bench? Right. How deep is my bench? So if you look at we talked about, in the last segment, we talked about your mentors. Well, how deep is your mentor bench? Right. Do you have the leaders, the people you admire, people you aspire not necessarily to be like them, but to have the results and success that they have in your own way, according to your power and to your purpose. But how deep is that bench? And then how deep is your healthcare team and how deep is your sick care team? And if you're constantly dealing with managing illness and have chronic health issues, you have to ask yourself, do I really have a healthcare team or do I just have a sick care team? Am I managing and controlling an illness? Am I doing, say, pain management, or am I doing ways to improve health by correcting the cause of the problem? So looking at your benches, that's what I hope this segment is, is I want the listeners to be inspired to really start asking them in all the different people areas that we'll be going through, how deep is your bench? And you'll see that the areas in your life that you're doing successful in your bench is great. You got a deep bench. Like, if you're doing good in a particular area, say, spirituality, or in fun or in your relationship with your significant other or your friends, you're probably doing very well if you have a strong bench. And if you don't, then you're probably not.

That makes sense. I've never heard it that way before.

Awesome. Awesome.

Now you talk about adding an accountability partner to that team. What does an accountability Partner do. What does that look like? Who should that be?

Yeah, so it could be really so many different people. So when we look at things like health, you want to have accountability partners. So one can be your doctors. Right. So unfortunately, a lot of doctors don't fulfill that role. They're busy just figuring out what you need, prescribing it, and then you're on your own. In our practice, people see us, you know, at the beginning, they might see us three times a week. So we can add that layer of accountability. We have systems in place, so we can offer that. But your friends can offer that. Like if you had a workout partner. Right. That's really key. Or a trainer can serve as an accountability partner or a nutritional coach, spiritual leader. If you look at, in the realm of spiritual health, you can have a small group, say in your church. Right. So you have those things. So accountability is so important. We as people, we are meant to connect with people. And having that accountability is. It makes it that you have to be accountable. And when oftentimes the areas where I have failed in life, like many of us have, if you look, we probably didn't have much accountability to somebody to report to. And the research shows, we cited a very landmark study in the book that really talked about the results are not just a small shift, but a dramatic shift. If you have somebody that you're accountable to and that you have to report to on a interval basis, that's how you really are able to achieve results. So accountability just works.

And it can be awkward at first, right? It's a shift of habits.

Yes, absolutely.

It can be a little uncomfortable in the beginning, but it's well worth the effort.

100%. 100%.

Now, this is a hot topic.

Okay.

Where do you stand on cost versus investment when spending money on your health?

Sure. Well, it's interesting because, you know, we'll ask patients, you know, if they have any concerns or anything like that. And sometimes people's concerns are time because everybody is busy. Right. And then the other part is that people, you know, have limited funds where they can put towards things. And so, as you know, this becomes a matter of belief. Right. And that talks about it. That's in our, in our power section that we talked about earlier. But my belief is that our health is our most important aspect of our life because we cannot be to our full potential if we don't have our health. Like, I can't be a great husband to my wife if I don't have great health or a great father to my children. So I always view my health as an investment and not a cost. And I really want to encourage the people that are listening to this that you need to make those financial investments, time, energy and finances in your health. And, you know, wherever we put our money is where we value. But if you look at it as an investment and not a cost, you will get such dividends in your life that will just completely pay off.

I agree. And I do have this conversation with a lot of people and I often tell them, either you're going to spend the money anyway in the beginning or at the end.

That's right.

You choose. The difference is you might suffer during that process if you don't spend it in the beginning.

Yeah. I mean, we have to encourage our patients, you know, if they're coming in pain and they have some issue that's been progressive. Right. Because most of these issues in the spine and nervous system are progressive. I tell a patient it's never going to hurt less or cost less than it does now. So you might as well make that investment now. And it's always a little bit of pain to make that investment. I like to be financially responsible. However, wherever I put my finances is where I focus. So if I'm focusing on my health by investing in my health, guess what? I'm going to get better health.

And I think that helps with the accountability. Also, if you invest in yourself, then it adds that level of accountability to producing good results. Otherwise.

100%. 100%, yeah. That's great.

Now, you mentioned in your book as well that you are who you surround yourself with.

Yes.

Tell us about that.

Yeah. You know, there was this great doctor that I remember studying when I was in chiropractic in my early training there, and he said, you can't stick your hand in a pot of glue without something sticking. Right. And so we become who we are, who we surround ourselves with. So if you really want to see your values and what you believe in and your preferences, look just around you. Look at your circle, because you are attracting people that are consistent with your values, your preferences, your beliefs, all those areas. So if you like what you're around and you like what you see, then that is validation of what's going on in your life. And if you are not happy with your circumstances, then you have to see what's going on. And maybe you need a value clarification or a purpose clarification or a vision clarification. So you do attract those people, and those people's values attract onto you. So if someone's in a rut. It's important to perhaps take a look at who they're surrounding themselves with and how those people can be impacting them. You know, I tell people.

I've had them do this exercise where they can write down all the people that are involved with their health. Okay, so they're working on health, for example, or their healthcare team. Right. And you can say, okay, write their names down and then put a plus sign or a minus sign. Are they a positive impact or a negative impact on their life? And if you have and you look that up and you total those numbers and you see what it is, if it's a positive number or negative number, you probably determine how successful you are in that area or how motivated you are to go in that area, too. And so one of the key factors that you can do is to systematically work on reducing those negatives. And that's a whole other episode, and it's talked about in the book, but we do become who we surround ourselves with, right?

Well, I'm happy to be surrounded by you and your team.

Thank you.

This was a really powerful chapter.

Thank you for all this great information.